Hints Don't Work. Lottay.com Company Blog

ReadWriteWeb article about Lottay's work environments

2010-03-10T17:18:00.000-08:00

Lottay and yours truly are spouting off giving advice to startup entrepreneurs in this article posted on ReadWriteWeb: An Entrepreneur's View on the Benefits of Coworking

Everything we said in the article - we believe!

Founder + Founder = Dynamic Duo!

2010-03-10T08:14:00.000-08:00

As we've noted in an earlier blog post, we practice pair programming here at Lottay. This method of code development is part and parcel of Extreme Programming, which is a flavor of Agile Development, a common process for software development at startups.

In the pics above, we see Co-founder Andy Elliott and Co-founder Ross Hale pretending to do pair programming. I say "pretending" because, well, they're not really coding - they're filling out an online form for something business-related.

But, hey, look at the concentration, the joy, the sheer dynamism of this power duo.

Awesome, yes?

Yes.

Ventura County Reporter: Hatching an idea

2010-03-09T14:55:00.000-08:00

Lottay recently received some nice press in one of the local newspapers in town: "Hatching an Idea" in the Ventura County Reporter. (Yeah, that's me in the color photo there :-)

The article is about the high-tech incubator in which Lottay is housed. We're in a building behind Ventura's City Hall. There are about a dozen other startups and small technology companies in here with us [including a guy who is building something physical - his workspace has drillpresses and lathes and batteries and circuit boards all over the place - fun!].

Part of being a startup is trying to make something out of nothing, having to make more with less. That's the startup life! Being in the incubator, as the article states, helps us do that.

Wired: The Future of Money

2010-03-09T14:47:00.001-08:00

The February 2010 issue of Wired magazine has a fascinating article about electronic money. Read the article here.

Much of the article is about the granddaddy of electronic payments, PayPal. Lottay is a partner of PayPal, of course, taking advantage of PayPal's developer platform. Lottay.com enables you to send money to someone as a gift and make it actually feel gift-like!

Our big vision for Lottay is to help take PayPal into the realm of "social payments": online gifting, paying each other back for dinner, personal loans, sending money home (or to your kids in college), the office pool around the Oscars, that sort activity.

It's the future of money!

Wall Street Journal: Get married in flip-flops. It's cheaper.

2010-03-02T13:37:00.000-08:00

The Wall Street Journal has a great piece about the "true cost" of a wedding these days. Read "What a wedding really costs" here.

$110,00?! Really? *ack*

I'm sure this is why many savvy newlyweds-to-be are telling their wedding guests not to buy them stuff - but to give them cash. Cash, after all, can go toward a down payment on a house or a car or into a retirement fund.

Or to pay off the bills from the wedding!

Try using Lottay to create a wedding registry to collect cash.

They WILL eat you out of house and home

2010-02-22T10:05:00.000-08:00

Confirming what all parents already know, WhatToExpect.com says that raising a child from infancy to the age of 18 will cost about a quarter of a million bucks. That's before college, mind you.

Parents and parents-to-be have been using Lottay.com to create and share baby registries. Because our wish lists are free-form, you can jot down anything you need or want ... from "Money toward college" to "This specific car seat". Share your wish list with family and friends and they can contribute toward your wishes via PayPal.

Using Lottay for your wedding registry

2010-02-22T10:00:00.000-08:00

Nice pick up about Lottay in Arizona Bride magazine: "Show Them the Money!"

I'm really writing this blog post as an excuse to link to this!

Chinese New Year ain't over yet..!

2010-02-22T09:55:00.000-08:00

Chinese New Year is still going on! The Asian celebration runs two weeks long. Don't you think all holidays should run two weeks ;-)

As some of you know, Lottay released our "Celebrate Chinese New Year!" application on Facebook in honor of the holiday.

Here's a nice blurb about our Facebook app.

You can also send virtual red envelopes on Lottay.com.

Lottay's "virtual Red Envelope" for Chinese new year gifts

2010-02-15T17:07:00.000-08:00

The second-largest Chinese newspaper in the U.S. did a nice article about Lottay's "virtual red envelope" for Chinese new year.

See the article here in Sing Tao Daily.

Lottay.com is about sending cash as gift, securely via PayPal. Chinese new year is often marked by giving cash as a gift, inside a red envelope. So we combined the two (Chinese new year started on Feb. 14 and runs for two weeks).

Happy Chinese New Year from Lottay!

2010-02-15T10:36:00.000-08:00

Gong xi fa cai! That's "Happy New Year" in Mandarin. February 14 was the start of the Chinese new year, a two week-long celebration of culture, tradition, food and family.

Lottay wants to help you celebrate the Chinese new year ... with our new Facebook application!

Check out Lottay's "Celebrate Chinese New Year" app here.

You can get your Chinese zodiac animal sign, your horoscope for the new year, and send good fortune to your Facebook friends.

That well wish can even include money via PayPal. Traditionally during Chinese new year, people give money gifts inside red envelopes. We're helping you do that electronically.

Not on Facebook (or just don't like Facebook)? You can also send an electronic red envelope on Lottay.com here.

Happy Year of the Tiger!

Entrepreneur.com gives love to Lottay

2010-02-15T10:28:00.001-08:00

Thank you Entrepreneur for showing Lottay some love!

A recent article on their web site lists Lottay.com as one of "17 Companies We Love".

(Scroll down to the middle of the page to see our citation.)

Pair programming at Lottay.com

2010-02-05T15:14:00.000-08:00

This is an office photo of Chris L. and Jesse F., two of Lottay's web developers. At Lottay, we practice what's known in the web dev world as "XP" - "extreme programming". No, we don't undergo five cosmetic surgeries, lose 75 pounds in two weeks, and remodel our house in four days. XP is a flavor of agile development, a software programming methodology that we employ here at Lottay.

A key component of XP is "pair programming", a coding technique where two developers sit at one computer and work together. One coder types, the other reviews his or her code, and they talk about it along the way.

It's a bit weird if you come from days of yore with cubicle hives of engineers sitting silently alone, tapping away at their individual keyboards.

Now, that said ... do Chris and Jesse look as if they're programming in that pic?

right. watching lolcats videos. yep.

Lottay's CEO talks about "old media"

2010-01-30T09:46:00.000-08:00

Yours truly was on the PBS news show Nightly Business Report this month. I gave an editorial about "old media", specifically the television industry.

A few years ago, before I joined Lottay, I ran the television web site, ABC.com. Eight years of working at The Walt Disney Company gave me insights into where the TV industry is heading ... and the sight ain't pretty....

Check out my commentary.

Chinese New Year starts on February 14, 2010

2010-01-30T09:44:00.001-08:00

We're two weeks away from scaring off bad spirits and wishing for a fruitful harvest. In case you don't know what I'm talking about, I speak of Lunar New Year, often just called Chinese New Year.

The Chinese New Year follows the ancient lunar calendar and was originally tied to harvest times in an agrarian society. As with many things Chinese (my parents are Chinese, so I can talk this way), tradition and custom and symbolism all got intertwined, so much so that many people who celebrate the Lunar New Year have no idea what it's really about.

For many contemporary Chinese and people of Chinese extract, the Lunar New Year is a time to wish people well. This wishing often takes the very tangible form of giving people money as a gift. Specifically, older people give younger people money in red envelopes (red packets, known in Mandarin as "hong bao"). The red envelope is packed with symbolism in Chinese culture. Well, actually it's packed with cash, but you get it.

Lottay.com is a web site for making the giving of money as a gift fun, personal, and secure. So we thought, Let's offer a Chinese New Year version of Lottay!

Gong xi fa cai! Gong hay fat choy!

Get married, get broke

2010-01-30T09:16:00.000-08:00

Wow - just read this report about the cost of weddings in America. I'm so glad I got married a long time ago :-)

The graphic on this article originally from BridePop is startling. Look at those bar graphs! $45,000 for the average wedding in San Francisco! Must be all those high-tech millionaires getting hitched driving that up :-)

On Lottay.com, we've seen that some of our users are using our web site to create wedding registries. Of course, on Lottay, all gifts given are money, transfered via PayPal person-to-person, so the newlyweds are going to end up with cash. Not five toasters, ugly table linens, and an anti-microbial reverse-osmosis water filter*.

What these couples have realized, smartly, is that the best gift they could receive for their wedding is money. After all, starting off a new life of coupledom and cocktail parties requires cash, not five toasters. And, you've just spent $28,000 for your wedding if you threw it in Boston (see article). You. Need. Money.

So go ahead and create a wedding registry on Lottay, state what you want to use the money toward, and get the cash. Your guests will feel good about giving you just what you want, and you'll have a way to pay off your credit card bills from the wedding.

*That was one of the gifts my wife and I received at our wedding. There was no card attached to it, so we don't really know who re-gifted, er, thoughtfully gave us that present.

Lottay has a new home - Ventura California

2010-01-30T09:02:00.000-08:00

At the beginning of this month, Lottay Inc. moved offices. We are now headquartered in Ventura California, one of the surfing capitals of the west coast. That's "surfing" as in ocean wave-riding :-) Though, in our case, we're housed in a high-tech incubator and we're an Internet company, so we surf the Web too!

The incubator Lottay is in is called the Ventura Ventures Technology Center. The Center is a space for tech startups to get off the ground, talk shop, find camaraderie, and store our surfboards (the V2TC is four blocks from "C Street", one of the best surf spots along the Pacific Ocean in southern California).

The City of Ventura runs the incubator, and they have been terrific landlords for Lottay.

The V2TC recently threw a launch party. Here's the scoop on that.

Contest Round-up! Win money!

2010-01-05T12:50:00.000-08:00

Lottay.com is sponsoring not one, not two, but three - count 'em! - three contests online right now this week don't wait offers end soon TO WIN MONEY.

DealSeekingMom has our contest here.

MomSpark has a Lottay contest here.

MomsWhoSave has our contest here.

Now, shoo, go, run - enter those contests!

Wishing you a lottay luck,

Harry

CEO

Lottay.com

MomSpark.net contest sponsored by Lottay - win $100!

2010-01-04T09:29:00.000-08:00

Attention attention - visit our friends at MomSpark.net and enter for a chance to win $100! Didn't get the Christmas gift you wanted? A hundred Bennies could do the trick then :-)

The contest is here: Lottay - Online Gifting Made Easy - $100 Giveaway

Thank you, MomSpark.net!

My Worst Gift Ever on NJ.com

2009-12-29T08:03:00.000-08:00

NJ.com, which is the web site for the New Jersey Star-Ledger newspaper, has a nice article about our web site, MyWorstGiftEver.com. Read it here: Website invites users to share gift horror stories, pictures

NJ.com liked the nutcracker. So did we. It's, um, unique!

Lottay Showcases Holiday "Giftastrophies"

2009-12-28T22:31:00.000-08:00

Dec 28, 2009 09:15 ET

Lottay Showcases Holiday "Giftastrophies"

MyWorstGiftEver.com Highlights the Worst Gifts Received This Holiday Season

LOS ANGELES, CA--(Marketwire - December 28, 2009) -

Millions of dollars are wasted on unwanted gifts ever year
Top gifting failures featured on MyWorstGiftEver.com include a super-sized Listerine bottle, $5 pre-paid phone card and questionable nutcracker
Users are invited to share their own "giftastrophes" by submitting photos and descriptions to worstgift@lottay.com

Lottay, the online gift-giving company, is providing consumers with a way to share their holiday gift misfortunes with others through MyWorstGiftEver.com. The website documents gift-giving gone wrong by featuring a variety of "giftastrophies," such as a ribbed acrylic banana case, men's bow tie g-string, and fruit cake sampler.

Visitors to MyWorstGiftEver.com will find an array of very bad gifts, submitted by people from across the world that are willing to anonymously share their misfortune. Users are encouraged to send photos and descriptions of their own worst-gift candidates to worstgift@lottay.com.

"Every year, millions of dollars are wasted on unwanted gifts like the ones featured on MyWorstGiftEver.com," said Harry Lin, CEO of Lottay. "That's why we made the site equal parts PSA, OMG and WTF by featuring gifts like the Chia Obama and long-handled toe-nail clippers. By doing this, we're calling out bad gift-giving habits to help people avoid future 'giftastrophies.' People can give better, and that's what Lottay helps them do with our online gift-giving service."

Rather than giving a bad gift, adding to the complexity of gift returns, or tying people to a gift card which may be loaded with fees, expiration dates and merchant restrictions, the Lottay online gift-giving and wish-list service helps individuals and groups give the gift of cash. According to a recent Western Union survey, 53 percent of consumers surveyed knew someone who wanted cash as a gift to help cover daily expenses this holiday season.

Through its partnership with PayPal, Lottay is helping consumers gift cash to friends and family for any occasion -- holidays, birthdays, weddings -- in a personalized way with e-greeting cards, customized messages, images and pictures. The cash gift is sent instantly and securely, delivered as a surprise via email and Facebook. Givers can specify the gift they would like the money to buy -- from a cup of coffee to a Caribbean cruise and beyond -- while receivers are free to use the money to buy the intended gift or anything else they want.

For more information on Lottay, please visit www.lottay.com. To get breaking Lottay news and additional perspectives, visit and subscribe to Lottay RSS blog feeds athttp://hintsdontwork.blogspot.com. Follow Lottay on Twitter at @GiveGiftsOnline, and visit the Facebook fan page at http://www.facebook.com/LottayInc.

Additional Resources

Lottay website: http://www.lottay.com

Lottay blog: http://hintsdontwork.blogspot.com

Lottay on Twitter: @GiveGiftsOnline

Lottay Facebook fan page: http://www.facebook.com/LottayInc

My Worst Gift Ever website: http://www.myworstgiftever.com

Our Wishing Wall website: http://www.ourwishingwall.com

About Lottay

Lottay™ Inc. makes giving and receiving the gift of money a personal, heartfelt experience. The free, online service uses e-greeting cards, private messages, images and pictures to wrap money in the emotion of the occasion. Gift givers and recipients enjoy the intimacy of a personalized present and the flexibility of money -- all backed up by the safety and security of PayPal. Lottay was founded in 2008 and is headquartered in the greater Los Angeles area. For more information, please visit www.lottay.com.

Lottay is a trademark of Lottay Inc. Other product and company names are property of their respective owners.

USA Today: Cash is king this year for holiday gift givers

2009-12-23T21:45:00.000-08:00

A "right on!" article in USA Today this week: Cash is king this year for holiday gift givers

Can we say that we love Anna, one of Lottay.com's customers who was quoted in the article? We don't know who she is, but we love her :-)

Most consumers are less than halfway done with holiday shopping

2009-12-17T23:15:00.000-08:00

So are you "most consumers"? That headline is from a survey just released by the National Retail Federation. Let us guess ... you *are* one of those last-minute shoppers :-)

I was at a Target store near downtown Los Angeles on Thursday evening and it was hard to find a parking space in what is usually a fairly open lot there. And inside the store, crowded house! Lots of shoppers in the aisles on their mobile phones -- "Well, what did Grandma say she wanted? What? Fuzzy ones or smooth ones? I dunno! They got both kinds here at Target but one costs more. Well is she there can you ask her?"

And the checkout lanes were insane.

All in all, a near-miserable experience. Yay for moi.

And that's why we started Lottay.com. So you can, without shame, tell people what you'd like and have them just give you money so you can spend it on what you want. And so you can give people money without embarrassment and be over and done with it from the comfort of your Snuggie and your PC.

(Poster image from Despair.com)

The glamour and peril of gifting, by DeepGlamour

2009-12-16T16:01:00.000-08:00

Nice ruminative article about gift-giving on this fun blog, DeepGlamour (great name!): The glamour and peril of getting gifts

And thanks for the shout-out to Lottay and this very blog :-)

Dude: Admit you're clueless and that's half the battle

2009-12-15T21:37:00.001-08:00

The Wall Street Journal has an amusing (and rather lengthy) article about bad gift giving and the men who practice such. Read it here: The gift that needs forgiving

The article has this classic line: "Men seem to be more clueless than women."

(That was referring to giving good gifts. Though some women might just apply the sentiment universally to everything we men do.)

Here at Hints Don't Work, we've also blogged about this, here and here. Oh, and here.

Ladies, if bad gifts do come your way from your menfolks this season, take a picture of the giftastrophe and send it to our share-all MyWorstGiftEver.com.

(Illustration from The Wall Street Journal.)

MyWorstGiftEver.com (Or, "Wow, an ugly sweater - thanks a lottay for that!")

2009-12-15T06:25:00.000-08:00

Readers of our Lottay.com blog know that last week we launched a fun little diversion called MyWorstGiftEver.com. The site has people posting photos of, you guessed it!, their Worst Gift Ever.

We got a nice write-up in the Chicago Sun-Times today: New Web site highlights the worst gifts ever

(I hope my parents don't read the article - I never told them how bad that graduation gift was - yikes!)

These socks are like the best gift EVER!

2009-12-14T14:15:00.000-08:00

Not!

Great funny post on the DoubleX site (no, dude, it's not a porn site): These socks are the best present EVER

The dialogue is a discussion of etiquette ... what you should do when presented with a really sucky present. The title of the posting is also a hint: "Lying about bad gifts - how do you do it?"

BTW, socks? Try these on for size.

Gift cards: It's called "breakage" and you know why..?

2009-12-13T22:33:00.000-08:00

From last week's New York Times, in an article about gift cards:

In the industry, this is known as breakage, and here’s what it means: If you buy a gift card for a family member or friend, there’s a good chance you’ll give a little gift to the retailer or bank that issued it as well.

But wait! There's more:

But we could put an end to all of this waste if the givers got wise to the billions in annual giveaways to retailers and banks and just handed over cash.... Nobody neglects to spend cash. The reason they came up with the word breakage is that the gift card system was more than a little bit broken.

Read the entire article here.

You know what Lottay.com sez: Gift cards are the new fruitcake!

(Image: New York Times online.)

PayPal Launches Send Money Application for Facebook

2009-12-10T16:09:00.000-08:00

PayPal announced today that it's launched a new "Send Money" application on Facebook. We think that's great; another way for people to take advantage of PayPal's rock-solid application.

As you know, our company, Lottay.com, is built on PayPal's "Send Money" platform. Lottay's mission is to make the giving of cash as a gift as excellent as possible and by utilizing the world's fastest and safest online money-transfer system (that would be PayPal), we've done that.

When you send money to a person using Lottay.com, you "wrap" that money transfer in a gift experience. Try it and feel the love!

AOL's WalletPop writes about Lottay.com

2009-12-10T14:27:00.000-08:00

WalletPop is AOL's personal finance blog, and today they posted a piece about Lottay.com. See it here -- Give 'em what they really want: Online dollars to use as they please

The article describes one of our Lottay customers, a doting uncle in San Francisco who's going to use Lottay.com to send gifts to his 11 nieces and nephews this year.

Spreading happiness -- that's what we want :-)

Lottay Documents Gift Giving Gone Wrong

2009-12-10T08:00:00.000-08:00

MyWorstGiftEver.com launches to reveal gifts to avoid this holiday shopping season
Chia Pet donkey, men’s bow tie g-string, among top gifting failures
Users invited to share their own “giftastrophes” by submitting photos and descriptions to worstgift@lottay.com

LOS ANGELES — December 10, 2009 — Lottay, the online gift-giving company, today launched MyWorstGiftEver.com, a website that documents gift giving gone wrong and reveals the gifts to avoid this holiday shopping season. Top gifting failures to date include a Chia Pet donkey, men’s bow tie g-string, and faux wooden art. Users are invited to share their own “giftastrophes” by submitting photos and descriptions to worstgift@lottay.com.

“MyWorstGiftEver.com is equal parts PSA, OMG and WTF,” said Harry Lin, CEO of Lottay. “There’s a certain, rubber-necking quality to MyWorstGiftEver.com. I mean, how many wish lists include the Chia Pet’s distant relative, the Chia Obama? Or a pair of long-handled toe nail trimmers? Not many. People can give better, and that’s what Lottay helps them do.”

Visitors to MyWorstGiftEver.com will find an array of very bad gifts, submitted by people from across the world who are willing to anonymously share their misfortune. People can also vote for which gift they think should top the list of worst “giftastrophes” ever. Users are encouraged to send photos and descriptions of their own worst-gift candidates to worstgift@lottay.com. By establishing an unofficial “don’t give” list, Lottay hopes to improve the 2009 holiday gift-giving experience.

People seeking a more satisfying gifting experience may consider the “most wished for” items from Lottay’s 1,000-wish survey, including the Nintendo Wii and Wii games and accessories, cash and travel to France, Disneyland and Las Vegas. Or users can come up with their own creative, thoughtful gifts which they can give in the form of cash wrapped in Lottay’s e-greeting cards, personalized messages, images and pictures, and then delivered safely and securely via PayPal.

For a social snapshot of online gift giving worldwide, people can also visit Our Wishing Wall, http://www.OurWishingWall.com, which prompts people to create wish lists that reflect what they really want for the holidays and other gifting occasions.

For more information on Lottay, please visit www.lottay.com. To get breaking Lottay news and additional perspectives, visit and subscribe to Lottay RSS blog feeds at http://hintsdontwork.blogspot.com. Follow Lottay on Twitter at @GiveGiftsOnline, and visit the Facebook fan page at http://www.facebook.com/LottayInc.

Additional Resources

Lottay website: http://www.lottay.com

Lottay blog: http://hintsdontwork.blogspot.com

Lottay on Twitter: @GiveGiftsOnline

Lottay Facebook fan page: http://www.facebook.com/LottayInc

About Lottay

Lottay™ Inc. makes giving and receiving the gift of money a personal, heartfelt experience. The free, online service uses e-greeting cards, private messages, images and pictures to wrap money in the emotion of the occasion. Gift givers and recipients enjoy the intimacy of a personalized present and the flexibility of money — all backed up by the safety and security of PayPal. Lottay was founded in 2008 and is headquartered in the greater Los Angeles area. For more information, please visit www.lottay.com.

###

Lottay is a trademark of Lottay Inc. Other product and company names are property of their respective owners.

Tags: Lottay, PayPal, GiveGiftsOnline, MyWorstGiftEver, gift cards, online shopping, holiday shopping, gifts

2009-12-06T11:42:00.000-08:00

Here's a great new article about Lottay.com in AuctionBytes, a trade publication for online merchants:

Giving the Perfect Gift: Lottay.com and Online Wish Lists
By Julia Wilkinson
AuctionBytes.com
December 06, 2009

Thanks for the wonderfully thorough write-up, Julia and AuctionBytes!

(Picture of AuctionBytes writer and author, Julia Wilkinson.)

Dude: Your mother-in-law is your Ally

2009-12-02T20:32:00.000-08:00

Have you heard this mother-in-law joke:

Lawyer to his client: “Your mother-in-law passed away in her sleep. Shall we order burial, embalming or cremation?”

Son-in-law: “Take no chances. Order all three.”

Now, that's terrible. OK, funny too, but it's terrible. What's really terrible isn't so much that's it mean, it's that it buttresses the notion that the woman who gave birth to a married man's eternal love (uh, that would be his wife - just to be clear) is the enemy.

Au contraire, mon frere!

Guys: While it's true that you picked your wife and you were just stuck with your mother-in-law, the fact is that your relationship with said mother-in-law is a vital lever in your relationship with your wife. Yes - the woman you love, the woman who raises your children, the woman who makes you your favorite pancakes, the woman who does that thing that you really really like.

The mother-daughter bond is a primal dynamic, a force of nature. It is usually dysfunctional to some degree, of course, but there's no denying that Mother-in-Law holds much power over Daughter/Wife. Even polarity power (Mother-in-Law says "Stop!" so Daughter/Wife goes "Go!").

As Sun Tzu might've said had he been on an episode of Oprah about mother-daughter relationships, "Win the mother-in-law, win the wife." Or maybe that was from Gladiator.

Anyway, the point is that you are stuck with your mother-in-law, and she has tremendous influence over her daughter, and her daughter [presumably] adores you, so the last thing you should be trying to do is antagonize, insult, demean, ignore, or belittle your mother-in-law. Your wife is her daughter. Dude, think on that awhile.

So turn your mother-in-law into an ally for you. Treat her with respect and affection. Laugh when she annoys you, shrug when she is being incomprehensibly difficult.

And get her a supremely thoughtful holiday gift.

What? You don't know what she wants? Of course you don't - she's your mother-in-law! So get her a Lottay gift :-)

Lottay's CEO Harry Lin is on TV!

2009-12-01T10:50:00.000-08:00

Blogs were invented for self-promotion, right? OK, so then it's cool for me to tell you that I've been on TV - woo hoo!

I am a new commentator of the PBS show Nightly Business Report. NBR is a half-hour news program dedicated to covering business and investing news.

My first commentary is "Instant Info", and you can watch it edited down here. Or you can watch the entire November 24th episode here (psst: my commentary comes at the end of the program).

I wrote an accompanying blog post for my commentary. Here it is in its entirety (or, read it on NBR's blog here):

Instant Info

posted by Guest Blogger at 5:02 PM on 11/24/09

Authored by Harry Lin, CEO of Lottay.com

In a world where Google, Wikipedia, and Twitter can tell you almost anything almost instantly, are we smarter or dumber than we've ever been?

Think about these examples:

- You're with a group of people and the question comes up, "When is daylight savings time?" Someone whips out their iPhone and Googles the answer. They can even tell you which countries follow daylight savings and which don't. This info takes about 60 seconds to find, and you could be anywhere, as long as there's Internet connectivity.

- You're in Best Buy shopping for a digital camera and wonder if that sale price is a bargain. With your iPhone, you snap a picture of the barcode and upload it to an app that scans a database of UPCs and tells you that camera is available at Amazon.com for $9.45 less, plus free shipping.

- It's Thanksgiving morning, you're in the kitchen preparing to cook, and you suddenly realize you don't know what to do with that acorn squash you picked up at the grocery [because it just looked so autumnal!]. Go to Twitter, tweet your question ("Best recipes for acorn squash?"; 30 characters!), and your followers tweet back links to web sites with great recipes, including reviews from other cooks.

The breadth and depth of information currently available literally at our fingertips is remarkable.

But has this made us smarter?

Not yet. Because there's a gap between information and knowledge and we're just starting to cross it.

That gap is the difference between a library and a librarian or a school and a scholar. One is a place with information, the other is a person with knowledge. You can also think of it as the difference between data and comprehension.

Within the Internet industry (my career for the last dozen years), we constantly talk about What's Next? What is "Web 3.0"?

For some Internet companies, the answer is knowledge. Some companies are attempting to close the gap between the library and the librarian.

New search engines such as Hunch and Wolfram Alpha are less about matching keywords and more about knowledge discovery. You type in "How do I find a marketing job in San Francisco?" or "Should I move to Seattle?", and these next-generation sites actually give you a meaningful set of answers. (Play around with Wolfram Alpha; it'll blow your mind.)

Today, though, we're still just drowning in data. The Internet is mostly noise. That's exactly why the consumer yearns for comprehension. The Internet businesses that innovate in that direction will be the next successes.

Harry Lin is CEO of Lottay.com, an Internet startup based in Ventura, California.

Gift Giving Without the Dreaded Fruitcake

2009-12-01T08:57:00.000-08:00

I thought about titling this blog post "Tooting Our Own Horn" cuz that's what we're doing!

Today in sCommerce, a blog about social commerce, we see a great review of our Lottay service.

I like how the reviewer said that the idea of Lottay sounded "a little goofy" but that it's "kind of fun".

Of course, we think it's very fun :-)

And here's a terrific review in Examiner.com. Love how the reviewer's 10-year-old niece wants cold hard cash for a gift! Don't we all? :-)

Lottay.com

Happy [Cyber] Monday!

2009-11-30T09:07:00.000-08:00

I love this headline from US News and World Report: Cyber Monday Is a Fake Holiday.

Far be it from Lottay.com to dissuade people from shopping online, but it's true that there's not much true about "cyber Monday", that's it's a very recent invention by marketers.

That said, the Wall Street Journal is reporting that market analysts expect record shopping online today.

And, of course, retailers are hoping that Cyber Monday is real - and big.

Your loved ones are hurtin'; give 'em cash

2009-11-25T14:13:00.000-08:00

We just read this article in USA Today today about how families are hurting this holiday season: "Families that cut a little last year are cutting more now"

*ouch*

We know from our own circle of families and friends how bad the economy is and how much that's hurting people. People are saving money everywhere they can. But with the holidays upon us, the pressure to give gifts to people, there's an emotional pain welling up.

We think you should give people money if that's what they really need. We know that you know that that's what they want.

But don't lose face, don't insult them. Maintain their dignity (and yours), be creative and fun with your gift of money. Give them a Lottay cash gift. It's an online, secure, personalize-able cash gift, from your PayPal account into theirs, "wrapped" like a present.

Our Wishing Wall

2009-11-24T08:17:00.000-08:00

Today Lottay.com launched a new place for your wishes to be posted: OurWishingWall.com!

On Lottay, you create wishes for anything and your friends, family, co-workers - anyone - can give you money toward your wish. It's the gift of cash, but you specify what it's toward.

The range of what people wish for is so imaginative that we created Our Wishing Wall as a place to quickly throw your wish out there for anyone to see. As one of Lottay's users said to us in an email, it's like tossing out your wish to the Universe and seeing what comes back ...

Our Wishing Wall is anonymous, so divulge [to the Interwebs] what you really wish for. Or comment on someone else's wish. Or just lurk and enjoy....

Happy wishing!

Lottay Cautions “Gift Cards Are the New Fruitcake”

2009-11-23T22:22:00.000-08:00

Lottay Cautions “Gift Cards Are the New Fruitcake”

Launch of ‘Our Wishing Wall’ Provides Social Snapshot of Online Gift Giving Worldwide; Prompts Wish List Creation to Avoid Unwanted Gift Cards (and Fruitcakes)

Consumer Reports survey: 46 percent plan to buy gift cards; only 15 percent want them
Our Wishing Wall inspires creative wishing and gift giving for holiday shopping
Wish lists may be shared with friends and family via Facebook and Twitter
Visit Our Wishing Wall at http://www.OurWishingWall.com before Black Friday, Cyber Monday

LOS ANGELES, Calif., Nov. 24, 2009 — Lottay, the online gift-giving company, today cautioned holiday shoppers and the public at large that gift cards are the new fruitcake. To counter the perpetuation of unwanted gift card (and fruitcake) giving, the company launched Our Wishing Wall, http://www.OurWishingWall.com, where people can anonymously post their wishes for all to see. The new site provides a social snapshot of online gift giving worldwide, prompting people to create wish lists that reflect what they really want for the holidays and other gifting occasions.

“With all due respect to fruitcake fans, the object of your affection has become the popular, brandy-soaked symbol of the gift nobody wants,” said Harry Lin, CEO of Lottay. “Now, gift cards are vying for that title, sans brandy and green maraschino cherries. Instead, the ingredients of unwanted gift cards are expiration dates, service fees and lock-in to a single store. Our mission is to help you give better gifts, and Our Wishing Wall is a place to inspire and be inspired, where wishes can be anything, from anywhere, limited only by your imagination.”

Our Wishing Wall and the Gift Card Fail

The shortcomings of gift cards have been documented most recently by Consumer Reports and a flurry of regional warnings. According to an October 2009 survey by Consumer Reports, the “perils” of gift cards include:

Unwanted – 46 percent of people plan on buying gift cards but only 15 percent want them.
Unused – About 12 percent of people had yet to redeem at least one of the gift cards they received during the 2008 holiday season.
Overspent – 65 percent of people who received a gift card in 2008 typically spent more than the value of the card.
Limited – 41 percent of people with unused, 2008 gift cards hadn’t found anything they wanted to buy.
Expensive – Gift cards can include fees, expiration dates, etc.

Our Wishing Wall helps avoid the perils of gift cards and other unwanted gifts. An aggregation of wishes from around the world, Our Wishing Wall encourages people to “wish outside the box.” Likewise, gift givers are prompted to “give outside the box,” coming up with creative, thoughtful gifts they can give in the form of cash wrapped in Lottay’s e-greeting cards, personalized messages, images and pictures, and then delivered safely and securely via PayPal.

Visitors to Our Wishing Wall can scroll through its pages, viewing what other people are wishing for and posting their own wishes. It also offers an at-a-glance summary of the site’s most popular wishes. All wishes on Our Wishing Wall are anonymous. People who want to share their wishes with friends and family members can create their own, personal wish lists on Lottay.com and post them to Facebook or Twitter or simply email them to whomever they want.

For more information on Lottay, please visit www.lottay.com. To get breaking Lottay news and additional perspectives, visit the Lottay blog at http://hintsdontwork.blogspot.com. Follow Lottay on Twitter at @GiveGiftsOnline and visit the Facebook fan page at http://www.facebook.com/LottayInc.

About Lottay

Lottay™ Inc. makes giving and receiving the gift of money a personal, heartfelt experience. The free, online service uses e-greeting cards, private messages, images and pictures to wrap money in the emotion of the occasion. Gift givers and recipients enjoy the intimacy of a personalized present and the flexibility of money—all backed up by the safety and security of PayPal. Lottay was founded in 2008 and is headquartered in the greater Los Angeles area. For more information, please visit www.lottay.com.

###

Company holiday gifts will be smaller this year

2009-11-23T21:57:00.000-08:00

Years ago I was an executive at a large media company headquartered in Los Angeles. Every year near Christmas time, one of the company's top executives would send out holiday gifts to all the managers within his business unit, me being one of them. He always sent Harry & David fruit, usually the pears. I love those pears. I came to expect them every Christmas.

When I left that company, of course I stopped receiving his H&D Christmas pears, and I was sad. I suppose I could just order myself some of those pears ... but it ain't the same as gettin' 'em from the boss as a gift.

Well, according to the news, lots of people will be getting smaller gifts from the boss this holiday year. See this USA Today story here.

The economic slowdown has manifested itself nearly everywhere, including in how companies spend their cash. Holiday gifts for employees will be hit.

I wonder if that exec still sends out the pears...?

Gift Cards Will Never Trump Cash

2009-11-19T13:29:00.000-08:00

I actually stole that headline from the Wall Street Journal. (The photo above, too.) Their Cheapskate column has this wonderful diatribe today. The subhead of the article is "Gift Cards Are Useful; Give Me Cash".

That's exactly what we believe here at Lottay.com. The article points out that recipients of cash as a gift are happy with the money. I mean, really, who doesn't want to be given MONEY? Cash is fantastic. Even moreso nowadays, right? The article says that the givers of cash as a gift are the ones who don't feel so great about it.

So use Lottay.com to give cash as a gift. You won't feel crass or thoughtless. You create the gift with your message, images, an e-card, even have other people contribute money to the total (so, a group gift). And it's totally safe and secure because the actual money transaction from you to your recipient happens through PayPal.

As the Wall Street Journal article says:

Somebody already invented that go-anywhere gift card. It's called cash.

Lottay Wish List Survey Forecasts Holiday Shopping Trends for Black Friday and Cyber Monday

2009-11-19T08:36:00.000-08:00

Lottay Wish List Survey Forecasts Holiday Shopping Trends for Black Friday and Cyber Monday

Cow, Monkey, Hookah, Satan Earn “Oddest Wish” Honors for Online Gift Giving

LOS ANGELES--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Lottay, the online gift-giving company, today announced the results of its wish list survey, forecasting holiday shopping trends for Black Friday and Cyber Monday.

38 percent of people want something other than products
Top product wishes: Nintendo Wii, Wii games and accessories
Top experiential wishes: Travel, cash for shopping

In addition to revealing the most wished-for products and gifts, the survey also reveals some of the oddest wishes that people have made on Lottay, including a cow, a monkey, a hookah and Satan.

Survey of 1,000 Wishes

Lottay surveyed a random sample of 1,000 wishes created for the 2009 holiday season. The survey reveals that 38 percent of people are wishing for an experience or something other than a product while 62 percent are only wishing for products. Overall, 60 percent of Lottay users are women, each of whom has an average of 2.5 wishes. On average, men have 2.1 wishes per wish list. Other survey results include:

Top product wishes – Nintendo Wii, Wii games and accessories. The Wii and Wii-related gear are wished for twice as much as Sony and Xbox 360 combined.
Runner-up product wishes – iPods, followed by cameras and boots. Ugg’s are the most popular shoe that is specifically named in wishes.
Top experience wishes – Travel to France, Disneyland and Las Vegas.
Runner-up experience wishes – Cash for use towards shopping, the holidays or hobbies. Massages came in third, and 2.5 percent of wishers want puppies.
Top wishes (women) – Cash as a gift, Nintendo Wii, travel and vacations, massage, iPod, boots.
Top wishes (men) – Travel, cash as a gift, love and sky diving (tied), iPod, Nintendo Wii, a car.
Oddest wishes – A cow, a monkey, a hookah, Satan—all of which were given one time, each. Surprisingly, Satan only cost $200, according to the person who gave him.
Wish most likely to appear on MLS – “A beautiful, one story, 2-car garage home in a very nice neighborhood, with 3 bedrooms, 2 1/2 bathrooms, custom eat-in kitchen with stainless steel appliances (including a Viking range with built in grill), pantry, sufficient cabinet space, and an island.” Presumably, “island” referred to a kitchen countertop rather than a land mass surrounded by water.

The 2009 Lottay survey reveals that in tough economic times, cash is a great gift that allows everyone to get what they want and need the most. Friends and family can use Lottay to deliver cash as a personal gift to help recipients pay their rent or treat themselves to a nice dinner. Lottay can also help out in a pinch for shoppers looking for the perfect holiday gift for a BFF or a $5 Secret Santa present for a co-worker. Regardless, a gift on Lottay is the gift of cash combined with the security of PayPal—not a gift card that can be lost or expire, no ugly sweaters, and no candles that will end up being re-gifted.

“A Lottay wish list doesn’t restrict you to choosing merchandise from a catalog. You can wish for anything you want,” said Harry Lin, CEO of Lottay. “That freedom opens up a lot of doors and a lot of creativity for the wisher. As a result, we’re finding that a growing number of people want something more than the latest ‘it’ product. They want love, world peace and the occasional mani-pedi. Lottay is the only place you can wish for, and give, anything at all.”

Additional Resources

Lottay website: http://www.lottay.com

Lottay blog: http://hintsdontwork.blogspot.com

Lottay on Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/GiveGiftsOnline

Lottay Facebook fan page: http://www.facebook.com/LottayInc

About Lottay

Lottay™ Inc. makes giving and receiving the gift of money a personal, heartfelt experience. The free, online service uses e-greeting cards, private messages, images and pictures to wrap money in the emotion of the occasion. Gift givers and recipients enjoy the intimacy of a personalized present and the flexibility of money—all backed up by the safety and security of PayPal. Lottay was founded in 2008 and is headquartered in the greater Los Angeles area. For more information, please visit www.lottay.com.

Gift cards are the new fruitcake

2009-11-18T22:40:00.001-08:00

In the olden days of yore during ye merry ol' holiday times, people used to give fruitcakes as gifts. Lots of people gave fruitcakes as gifts. Yet, very few of the recipients of said cake o' fruit wanted that gift. So it became a joke ("the fruitcake").

I think maybe gift cards are the new fruitcake.

Check out this article in Yahoo!Shine: Five Reasons to Avoid Gift Cards This Holiday Season

Still want to gift the equivalent of cash? We suggest [quite self-promotingly] that you try a Lottay.com online gift of cash, complete with e-card and other nifty gift-y wrapping. A Lottay gift (money sent from your PayPal account into your recipient's PayPal account) has none of the pitfalls of gift cards.

Just say no to gift cards, er, fruitcake this holiday season!

If you're going to spend green, you might as well buy green

2009-11-18T18:58:00.000-08:00

I drive a Lexus hybrid. My wife drives a Toyota Prius. Together we are reducing our carbon footprint, one hybrid mile at a time.

Okay, don't call me smug please, just hang on a bit! I know that driving a brand-new automobile is kind of the opposite of caring for our environment, but I see consumerism as a matter of choices, and those choices have real-world consequences. Even if it's just mitigation.

If you're going to drive a new car, you can buy Car A or Car B and one will have less negative impact on the earth over its lifetime. Simple as that. So, why not make the better choice? Like choosing recycled over virgin, or using canvas instead of plastic, or tap instead of bottled.

As the holiday gift season bears down upon us consumers, think about the choices you're going to make. Your money is hard-earned and has meaning. What you spend it on makes a difference.

So check out these "green" gift guides:

Yahoo's Green Holiday Gift Guide

CNet's Techy Green Gift Guide

The Environmental Defense Fund gift guide

Treehugger "Slow Holiday" gift guide

Save the planet!

P.S. Send a virtual gift complete with real money on Lottay.com and be really, truly green. No driving, no shipping, no packaging. Some bits of electricity flowing through the Interwebs.

I loves me a Tauntaun Sleeping Bag (and other holiday gift suggestions from GeekDad)

2009-11-18T18:51:00.000-08:00

What self-respecting Star Wars-lovin' grown-up man doesn't want a Tauntaun Sleeping Bag for Christmas? This and other toe-curlingly nerdy - excuse me, geeky (there is a difference between nerd and geek but that's another post) - gift suggestions are to be found on the GeekDad Holiday Gift Guide.

Nightvision binoculars, D&D game pieces - woo boy! Who sez men are simple creatures?

Cash is king this holiday shopping season

2009-11-18T14:26:00.000-08:00

Are you going to buy gifts this holiday season with greenbacks or with plastic? A new report that just came out predicts that more of us will pay with cash than with credit this shopping season. The report is here at Credit.com.

The prediction is that shoppers will use cash and debit cards instead of going into more debt. Apparently we as a society in the United States got the memo: We've been paying down our staggering amount of credit card debt. And we don't want to go backwards.

No slam against the credit card industry, but, heck yeah, it's about time we stopped piling on the debt and started digging out from under it.

A perfect, and perfectly manageable, way to set and stick to a holiday-shopping budget is to pay only with cash. Personally, I stopped using credit cards years ago. I only pay with cash, debit, or checks (checks! call me old-school!). This no-credit cards rule has made managing my money more straightforward. Don't have enough to buy it? Well then, don't buy it!

This holiday-shopping budget management is something that works well on Lottay.com. How? Simple. You send gifts of cash using Lottay.com. That cash sits in your PayPal account (you must use PayPal on Lottay). So decide how much you want to spend on gifts, put that amount into your PayPal account, and send your cash gifts with Lottay. You won't over-spend or go into debt. Sweet.

Are you going to regift this season?

2009-11-17T22:32:00.000-08:00

Making the news rounds on the Interweb today is a poll showing that more Americans plan to regift this year compared to last year.

The Consumer Reports poll says that 36% of American adults plan on recycling their gifts this season compared to 31% last year.

Are you a regifter?

Far be it from me to cast aspersions on regifting ... but wouldn't it be nice to get a gift you actually wanted to use?

That's why we started Lottay.com. Give money - it's the best. Create and share a wish list - tell 'em what you'd really like. Everyone's happy. And that boxed set of scented candles shaped like snowmen stops making the rounds.

Lottay, Inc. company announcement

2009-11-16T21:43:00.000-08:00

Lottay.com is excited to announce this company news: We've closed our Series A round of financing!

In case you're not familiar with the world of startups and venture capital, Series A is the first round of institutional investment a startup company takes as it builds its business. The major investor in our Series A is DFJ Frontier, a terrific west coast VC firm.

We're also excited to be partnering with PayPal, which is part of the reason DFJ Frontier is excited about Lottay.com. It's excitement all around - woo hoo!

Read our official news announcement here.

PayPal is our pal - and your friend too!

2009-11-16T16:01:00.000-08:00

Those of you who use Lottay.com to send cash gifts or to make wish lists know that all the sending and receiving of money goes through PayPal. We are a special partner ... a "pal", if you will - ha! ... of the online money giant.

Why? Because PayPal is the most secure way to send and receive money online. You can tie your bank account to your PayPal account or you can tie a credit card or a debit card to your PayPal account. PayPal has been doing business for about a decade and is rock-solid safe.

When you send or receive a Lottay.com gift, Lottay itself doesn't actually touch or see the money transaction - that all happens through PayPal, by design. The fewer people who handle your money, the better.

We're excited by our PayPal partnership. And we'll have a big company announcement tomorrow, Tuesday, November 17, around that. Stay tuned ...

$13 billion wasted every year on useless and unappreciated gifts

2009-11-13T19:28:00.000-08:00

According to a business school professor, Americans waste about $13 billion each year on gifts that are useless and unappreciated. Wharton professor Joel Waldfogel says that giving gifts isn't necessarily the best consumer activity for stimulating our recession-mired economy.

Huh - not buying a Snuggie for everyone in my family for Christmas isn't a good idea? Who'd a thunk!

Prof. Waldfogel also says that gift cards aren't that much better because recipients don't always redeem their full value, "resulting in more value destruction."

"Value destruction" doesn't seem like a nice thoughtful gift to me.

My Ultimate Wish List (and, What's yours?)

2009-11-13T11:09:00.000-08:00

What makes wish lists on Lottay.com so special is that they are free-form. That means you write out your wish and pick images and a description ... you're not forced to choose specific products from a catalog or something. So, really, you can wish for anything. Your friends and family see your wish and know they're giving you money (safely, via PayPal) toward your wish. (You're getting the money.) Cool huh?

Our users have told us that when they make a wish on Lottay.com, it feels a bit like closing your eyes, focusing on your dream, and then throwing out your wish to the Universe ... and seeing what comes back. Do you believe in karma? I do.

On Lottay.com, people have wished for everything and anything you could imagine. World peace. A monkey. A cow. A Lamborghini. Ugg boots. Cash for the rent. Their girlfriend to tell them "I love you". Their grandfather, who just passed away, to come back....

Here's my wish list on Lottay.com.

What's your wish list?

Twilight author Stephenie Meyer on Oprah today

2009-11-13T08:30:00.000-08:00

Twilight New Moon opens next week, and today on The Oprah Winfrey Show it's: Stephenie Meyer, the author of the Twilight novels. So check your local TV listings!

(I admit that Oprah is a guilty pleasure of mine. "You get a car! And you get a car! And you get a car!" And of course, this.)

We wrote about The Twilight Saga: New Moon earlier.

According to her blog, it's the only interview she's going to give about Twilight New Moon. She figured if she's going to do one media interview, it might as well be The Big One.

That reminded me of when Bono, lead singer of the rock band U2, was on Oprah a few years ago, promoting his African charity work. Early in the show, he said, "If you want to speak to the world, you go on The Oprah Winfrey Show." The audience exploded.

Hints Don't Work and Men Don't Listen

2009-11-12T16:48:00.000-08:00

Or I could sub-title this post "Men are from Mars and Women are from Venus".

We were on a conference call today with one of colleagues, reviewing wish list data from our web site, Lottay.com. We noted to her that most of the wishes on Lottay.com are from women; it's about 60/40 F/M on the wishes tally.

She said, "Of course."

We said, "Huh? Why is that?"

She explained, "Because we women know what you men want. We listen. So we know what you want. And because women listen so well, we anticipate your needs and wants. So you come to expect it. So you feel no need to tell us what you want - because we figured it out already.

"But men don't listen, so they don't know what we want, even if we hint. It's just like our blog says: Hints Don't Work!"

So this was a very self-reflexive moment, kind of meta. But it was interesting.

"That's why more women are posting wishes than men on Lottay.com," she continued. "Because you guys don't listen so we have to hammer it into your thick skulls." Okay, I made up that last part in italics, but I could hear it in her voice.

Hey, I was listening to her!

The gift of cash, hard times, and The Shawshank Redemption

2009-11-12T13:00:00.000-08:00

I saw this press release headline the other day:

"Nearly seven out of ten Americans plan to give cash or gift cards this holiday season". Press release here.

Whoa. Almost 70% of us will give money and plastic money this holiday? Wow, if that isn't a reflection of the tough times we're struggling through, I don't know what is.

Wait, you say - why does X mean Y? (X = the giving of money as a gift; Y = we're struggling financially)

Here's why:

We all know someone, sometimes many someones, who are really truly struggling with money these days. I have friends who are super well-educated and experienced and have been unemployed for months. In one case, a dear friend has been hunting for a job for more than a year. I have friends who are under-employed too. Their hours were cut back [involuntarily] or they took a salary cut [involuntarily] but are working the same hours - either way, their household incomes have dropped. I have friends who are having to sell their houses because they can't afford their mortgages. I have friends who are moving across state lines to seek work.

You know these people too, I'm sure. The recession is so wide-spread and fundamental that very few folks are unaffected.

But I don't mean to be a Debbie Downer about this. In fact, my attitude toward what we're slogging through is just the opposite. And I'm not saying that just because my Zoloft has kicked in.

I am heartened by the re-assessments people are making in light of reduced household income. I am brightened by the attitude shifts people are making in the face of on-going belt-tightening. When you have less money and you can't get more credit, your priorities change. Your sense of value sharpens. Your empathy opens up just that much wider to others in need ... because you're beginning to walk a mile in their shoes....

Or maybe I'm just a hopeful kind of fella :-)

I think people are planning to give cash and plastic cash this holiday season because they know that the best gift in these hard times is money. Your brother who lost his job doesn't really want another sweater for Christmas. Your girlfriend whose salary was cut by 15% really doesn't want another iPhone case. And your dad never wanted another necktie, ever, really :-)

So we're planning to give what they want - cash. I say, go!

And, self-servingly, I say, try Lottay.com for cash-giving! We enable you to give your cash gift "wrapped" like a real present, with an e-card and a message and pictures, all done through PayPal (so it's safe and secure).

However you do it, when you give money this holiday, you're along with the rest of us.

Apple iPhone more profitable than Nokia smartphones

2009-11-11T17:58:00.000-08:00

My wife loves her iPhone. She couldn't live without it. For her, it's less about the phone and more about the i, as in "Internet". She's checking her email and updating her blogs and tweeting to her 1500 followers on Twitter.

She uses her iPhone like Capt. Kirk used the bridge of the Enterprise. Or, maybe I should say, like Capt. Janeway used the bridge of Voyager. My wife is sort of like Trinity in The Matrix, downloading instructions on how to operate a motorcycle at a moment's notice. (In fact, if she could actually, like, plug her iPhone directly into her head, so as to avoid the virtual keyboard and typing and all that physical fuss, she would!)

I think it's iPhone Moms such as my wife who have helped make Apple a more profitable handset maker than Nokia.

It's amazing when you think about it. The iPhone has been around for, what, two years? And now my wife can't imagine her life without it.

Notice! Kate Spade Sample Sale!

2009-11-11T17:03:00.000-08:00

Everyone's watching their pennies these days, which means that an opportunity to get up to 75% off Kate Spade is worth blogging about!

(Self-serving hint: Send your girlfriend or wife or mom a Lottay.com gift: "Here's $70 toward a fabulous Kate Space handbag!")

The Twilight Saga: New Moon. Give the gift of life, er, death, er, living dead.

2009-11-11T13:38:00.000-08:00

11.20.09.

The date is known by millions of girls, tweens, young women, women - and their grandmothers. And a few guys. And their girlfriends. And their grandmothers.

For next Friday is the opening of The Twilight Saga: New Moon, the sequel to the smash hit movie Twilight, starring Robert Pattinson (as vampire Edward Cullen) and Kristen Stewart (as his human love, Bella Swan).

I've not much to say about Twilight because so much has already been said, and, really, what could I contribute to the global conversation?

But I will share this anecdote:

Last November, a friend of mine in Los Angeles took her 14-year-old daughter to see Twilight on opening weekend. She said that the moment the opening credits started on the screen, the sold-out audience -- of teen-age girls and their mothers -- started screaming. The screaming lasted, non-stop, for the entire two hours. She said she didn't really understand a lot of what happened in the movie - because she couldn't hear any of the dialogue!

Why don't you round out your daughter's (or your BFF's) Twilight: New Moon experience next week with a Lottay.com gift?

Give her money toward movie tickets for opening weekend: The Twilight Saga: New Moon

Or how about money toward the Twilight: New Moon soundtrack? Or toward a Team Edward t-shirt?

We took the liberty of looking around Lottay.com to see who's Twilight'ing, and we think you all should donate to this person's Twilight wish!

Create your own Twilight wishes here.

Dude: When she complains about the toaster oven, she doesn't want a new one as a gift

2009-11-10T23:44:00.001-08:00

We men are funny creatures when it comes to gift-giving, aren't we? Well, maybe not so much funny as silly. Okay, stupid. Sometimes.

A guy friend of mine recently told me, somewhat proudly, that he was going to buy his wife a new toaster oven for her birthday. Incredulous at his manly blindness, I asked him, "Why on earth would you do that? Do you want to spend the next few years of your marriage practicing celibacy?"

"What? Man, I know she wants one! She told me she hates the toaster oven we have now. She complains about it all the time. How it heats unevenly, how it's so dirty she can't get it cleaned off completely, how -"

I cut him off, because he's my friend and, well, when you see someone about to stick a fork into their eye, you stop them. Because that's what man-buddies do for each other.

"Dude," I interrupted. "She doesn't want a new toaster oven for her birthday." He started to protest again but I gave him the talk-to-the-hand gesture. "Oh, she may want a new toaster oven. But she doesn't want it For Her Birthday. Do not give a practical item - especially a household cooking appliance - to your wife as a birthday present. You don't celebrate the existence of your beloved wife by giving her an appliance! Your wife's birthday gift should not be practical!"

Man thought. Neurons activating, synapses firing. Like when the apes in 2001: A Space Odyssey figured out the bones thing. He got it.

"Oh, I get it." He shook his head and looked at me like a man who had been about to stick a fork in his eye but stopped at the very last second.

Where's the beef [in a lean economy]?

2009-11-10T22:45:00.000-08:00

When I was in college, I worked for a time at an Arby's fast food restaurant in northern New Jersey (Route 10, East Hanover, for those who must know the exacts - I think it's gone now). I worked the kitchen, making the food.

Did you know that the "roast beef" came shrink-wrapped, packed in cardboard boxes, with a label on it that explained how to warm it up in the ovens? The bright yellow-orange-y "cheese" that oozes onto the Beef 'n Cheddar sandwiches came in big tins that we dropped into hot water to soften up. The labels on those cans said "cheddar cheese sauce". We'd open up the tin, stick a pump in the sauce, and that's how the "cheddar" got dispensed. The beef slices had to be weighed on little scales before going onto the buns. Each type of sandwich got a certain weight of meat, indicated by little labels stickered onto the scale.

Now, this all may sound horrid, like a chapter of out Fast Food Nation. But I admit that I came to really, really like Arby's sandwiches, especially the Beef 'n Cheddars. Umm, yummy salty goopy goodness... Because I worked the kitchen, I'd pump extra yellow onto my extra-meat weighted sandwiches - hooray for double sauce and double meat without paying for it!

Now we see that Arby's isn't doing so well during the recession. In fact, according to this article in Slate.com, my former beefy employer has been in trouble for awhile, in part because the restaurant chain is concentrated in the Midwest where the recession came early and has taken up long-term residence.

If I was consulting for Arby's, I'd recommend that they nix most of their menu. Offer roast beef with sauce options (Arby's sauce, their "horsey" sauce, and the aforementioned yellow cheddar sauce), the deep-fried potato cakes, the battered curly fries, and the apple turnovers. And that's it! No salads or chicken or deli-meat sandwiches or toasted subs -- I mean, huh? In lean times, focus on what you do best.

And for Arby's, that's oven-warmed shrink-wrapped beef and pump-dispensed cheddar sauce. Bullseye!

What gifts our users are giving on Lottay.com

2009-11-10T15:05:00.000-08:00

One of the most unique things about Lottay.com is that the gift you give can be anything. That's because you're actually giving money - a transfer of cash via your PayPal account - so when you make your gift on Lottay.com, you can tell your recipient that money is for anything.

Example: "Dear Christine, here's $40 toward a mani/pedi - you deserve it, girlfriend!"

We took a peek into our database and saw some interesting gifts being given. Here's a somewhat random list of what gifts are being given on Lottay.com:

A trip to Paris
A trip to Hawaii
A trip to Australia

(The above were in descending order of popularity.)

Nintendo Wii

Sony Playstation

Microsoft Xbox

(The Wii was given more than twice as often as the Playstation and the Xbox combined, BTW.)

Various flavors of iPods

Zune music player

(There were exactly three Zune's given as gifts. iPods - waaaay more.)

A beautiful, one story, 2 car garage home in a very nice neighborhood, with 3 bedrooms, 2 1/2 bathrooms, custom eat-in kitchen with stainless steel appliances (including a Viking range with built in grill), pantry, sufficient cabinet space, and an island.

(Yes, that was the gift, verbatim, as given on Lottay.com. We assume the "island" meant a countertop island in the kitchen. Not An Island. But you never know.)

a cow

a monkey

a hookah

Satan

(All of the above were given one time, each. How much does Satan cost? $200, according to the person who gave El Diablo as a gift.)

rent money

That last one is probably especially relevant in these trying economic times. With Lottay.com, you can send money to someone who needs it ... but without the stigma or embarrassment sometimes associated with giving cash.

Say your friend lost their job recently and is having trouble paying their rent or their car note or their student loan. You know and your friend knows that the best gift you could give them this holiday is MONEY. It's what they really need and want.

But you don't want to hand them a check and say, "Here's $50 to help you pay your rent."

So on Lottay.com, you send that friend $50 "toward a ski jacket." Or "toward a massage." Or "toward a nice dinner out."

The money transfers safely and privately from your PayPal account to your friend's PayPal account ... and your friend can do whatever they want with the money. Face is saved, friendship is strengthened.

Here's to "rent money."

Zhu Zhu Pets the new Tickle Me Elmo?

2009-11-10T08:37:00.000-08:00

We hate to stoke the worries of parents across America, but ...

... stores are running out of the the toys your children want for Christmas gifts!

Parents' Red Alert! Parents' Red Alert! Parents' Red Alert!

Read this story in The Associated Press today: Can't find the hot new toy? Blame the economy.

An excerpt:

Stores, remembering how Americans snapped their wallets shut last holiday season, didn't order big piles of merchandise in the first place. The result, with seven weeks to go before Christmas, is that popular toys are already hard to find.

Another story in the Financial Times talks more about the Zhu Zhu Pets line of toys. The company behind the toys, Cepia, reportedly is coming out with more: robotic chipmunks, robotic squirrels, robotic hedgehogs, robotic rabbits....

Somehow, we think no matter how many they come out with, they'll all be "scarce" this holiday shopping season.

Beware gift cards, Part Deux

2009-11-09T18:05:00.000-08:00

Lions and tigers and bears - and gift cards, oh my!

Yes, we here at Lottay.com have our point of view of course, but please take this post for what it is: consumer warning! We cherish the gift-giving experience so much. Waste - "breakage" in the parlance of the Gift Card Industry - really chaps our collective hide.

So take heed: Gift cards have many potential problems.

Here's an excerpt from The Delaware News Journal:

Gift cards have become wrapped in fine print and loaded with booby traps. Some carry carefully obfuscated fees. Others quietly expire.

Soon, thanks to the new credit card laws passed by Congress, some of those catches will be undone. But not all of them, and certainly not in time for this holiday season.

So shop with care, and keep in mind that not all gift cards are created equal, and that some are endowed by their creator with certain unfathomable blights.

Here's a comment posted to that article:

"I gave my daughter a 75.00 Visa/MC gift card for her birthday. It cost me 3.50 to purchase it (at a bank) and then when she used it exactly one month later, it was only worth 68.00. I'll never buy one again."

Word.

Have, Want, Need - FabSugar's 2009 Holiday Gift Guide

2009-11-09T17:48:00.000-08:00

Whoa - we're still eating leftover Halloween candy here at the office but *man* does it feel like Christmas is around the corner. I haven't even thought about turkey and stuffing and pilgrims yet!

I just read FabSugar's 2009 Holiday Gift Guide, and it's, well, fab. They've listed gift suggestions for party hostesses, the grandparents, moms-to-be, dads and moms, campers (I love how specific that gift guide is - campers. Can't you just go here and be done with it?)

I guess it's time to start thinking about gifts for the friends, family, and co-workers.

Can we re-gift our Halloween candy?

Beware the seemingly simple allure of gift cards ..!

2009-11-08T19:11:00.000-08:00

So you don't want to give cash money as a gift this holiday season, but you don't know what to buy your recipients. So you're thinking of doing what millions of other gift-givers do every holiday season: You buy gift cards.

You may want to re-think that. Read this news from the Consumer Federation of America.

"Consumers clearly like the convenience and flexibility of general purpose gift cards but also are largely unaware of their costs and risks," noted CFA Executive Director Stephen Brobeck.

If you think giving cash money as a gift is lousy, then the lousier gift is plastic money that buys you less than you paid for it. Woohoo, what a deal!

I know, I know - we're biased here at Lottay.com. But really, com'on - you can't go wrong with money as a gift.

Think about the last time you received money as a gift. Uh huh. Yep.

You liked it.

Dude: When she says "boots", she doesn't mean galoshes

2009-11-07T17:45:00.000-08:00

We here at Lottay.com constantly test our web site with real users. It's how we help decide what to do, what features to add, what services to provide. (Do you want to be a Lottay.com tester? Email me.)

Recently in San Francisco, we were testing a set of features with a man in his early 30s. He was a really nice guy, a decent man, and sort of a dude, if you know what I mean.

While working on a Lottay gift for his wife on our web site, he mentioned that it was their wedding anniversary. We congratulated him and asked him what he thought she wanted as a gift.

"Black boots," he replied.

We nodded and said, "Well, why don't you go ahead and make her gift toward 'black boots'? She'll love it."

He then proceeded to finish creating her Lottay gift. His gift on Lottay.com said, "Honey, here's $35 toward black boots."

~ cringe ~

I remember thinking to myself: "Oh god, I hope he remains married after this ..."

Of course he meant well. Heck, he was trying to give his wife what she wanted.

But, see, fellas, when your woman tells you that she wants a pair of black boots for her anniversary gift, she doesn't mean these.

She means these. Or something more in that category, if not that astronomical price.

I admit: I once gave my wife a set of white athletic socks for a gift. Nineteen years later, I am still paying for that. Or, as my better half says, Once a husband-in-training, always a husband-in-training.

Women of the Year 2009, according to Glamour magazine

2009-11-07T17:33:00.000-08:00

I found this to be a very interesting list.

What resonates with me about this list is the reaffirmation that the most attractive traits in a woman are intelligence, strength, individualism, and empathy.

And terrific grooming :-)

Welcome to Hints Don't Work! Welcome to Lottay.com!

2009-11-07T16:34:00.000-08:00

Hello Gift Lovers!

Welcome to Hints Don't Work, the official company blog of Lottay.com! Lottay.com is a startup company based in southern California. Our main office is in downtown Santa Barbara.

You use Lottay.com to send money as a gift. What makes Lottay.com different than, say, a bank transfer or Western Union? We "wrap" the experience in a "gift-y" feel. Your gift of cash can include an electronic greeting card (an e-card), a personalized message, images and pictures, and comments from others.

Here's a great (and real) example of a Lottay gift. So, yes, on Lottay.com, a gift is anything you can imagine ... just write it out ... but you're giving money toward it. Your recipient gets money in the end, dropped into their PayPal account.

All money sent on Lottay.com is handled exclusively by PayPal, the most trusted name in electronic funds. Safe, secure, and private. In fact, we're a special partner of PayPal.

On Lottay.com, you also can make a gift a group gift by having others donate or contribute to the total. For example, if you want to get me a Nintendo Wii for Christmas (hint, hint!) but it's too expensive to buy by yourself, set up a group gift on Lottay.com and have my friends contribute to the total cost of my Wii. (See that big orange button on that page? Click that :-) Don't worry - you have to confirm everything before sending anything.)

We also offer wish lists so you can tell your friends and family what you really want. Or, even better, invite your friends and family to create their wish list so you can find out what to get them. Isn't that always the hardest thing about giving a gift - knowing what to get them. (Dad, we're looking at you!)

And that's really what Lottay.com is all about: Giving better. (Our web site's motto is "give better.") We believe that money is the greatest gift of all because cash is flexible, useful, and always in vogue. Cash doesn't expire, it has no interest charges, and you can't lose it like a giftcard or gift certificate.

But don't give money in a thoughtless, impersonal way. Give money the Lottay way - a personalized, thoughtful gift toward something they really want.

Lottay.com is very new and we're a small team, so we'll be adding new features and cool stuff soon. If you have suggestions, we want to hear them! Please email me, Harry Lin. I'm Lottay.com's CEO. (Before joining Lottay.com, I was General Manager of Evite.com and before that, Vice President of ABC.com.)

We'll be posting regularly on our blog - not just company info but anything we find relevant and useful, or just wacky. Cute videos of funny cats, that sort of thing.

Much xoxo,

Harry